Breeding season for herds calving down in late January is only a few weeks away and, for many, they will be aiming for that first week of February before cows start calving.
The 2025 calving season on average started a bit later than usual, probably closer to the second week of February for many herds in the country.
This was put down to a couple of factors, with many blaming the harsh cold weather at the start of May 2024 accompanied with poor grass growth which hindered conception rates.
However, many herds opted to start their calving season that bit later due to the poor wet weather in the last few recent Februarys. In an effort to get cows out to grass as they calve down and to match the farm’s grass growth curve.
Farmers need to analyse this again and decide when they are starting their breeding season for 2025, with the advice being for free-draining soil farms to start calving on February 1 with February 7-10 being optimal for heavier soil type farms.
Farmers should reflect on their calving start date over the last few years and decide whether it has suited their system and the gestation length of bulls used, to finalise a mating start date.
Breeding season
The weather of late has been favourable in terms of grass growth, which has given cows a chance to build up their body condition score (BCS), but cows that lose more than 0.5 units of BCS are at a risk of lower fertility.
As cows are approaching their peak milk production, their intakes are still reduced and they are not at their maximum intake levels, so if grass on the farm is limited, make sure cows are supplemented to make up energy levels.
Cows that are under target in terms of condition should be marked for once-a-day milking for the next couple of weeks and fed as normal.
Ensure the cows have an adequate amount of minerals available to them and, if there has been problems in the past, blood-test a number of cows to see what minerals are lacking so timely intervention can commence.
Cows that have given problems in the past should be marked and may involve retained cleanings.
Along with these cows, those that had twins, milk fever, or a difficult calving should be scanned for uterine score and ovarian activity and treated accordingly.
Cows should be tail painted now and monitored ahead of breeding to identify any that are not bulling, so that they can be marked for scanning and inspection as well.
A number of these non-bullers or problem cows could potentially be marked for fixed time artificial insemination (AI) in the early breeding season to increase their chances of getting back in calf.
Maiden heifers should also kept an eye on to make sure that they are on target for the upcoming breeding season, as they should be about 60% of their mature bodyweight if starting breeding on May 1.
If heifers are behind target, they should be got out to grass as soon as possible, and if there are a few in a particularly bad way, additional supplementation should be allocated.
Selection
Agriland spoke with a number of AI companies, with the majority of them reporting that there is a huge emphasis on milk when selecting bulls this year.
Improving milk solids is still the number one criteria, but it is believed that many farmers are looking to pump a bit more milk into the herd after a few seasons of poor weather and disappointing grass growth, which may have hindered solids production.
It was also said that many farmers had been picking bulls with negative milk and high solids percentages and have probably struggled to build kilos of solids in poor weather years.
However, farmers need to focus on improving their herd genetic merit as this has a direct effect on your farm’s performance and profit.
The use of sexed semen to drive this genetic gain is advisable, and farmers should plan to use at least two sexed semen straws to generate each dairy female required. Consult your breeding advisor as sexed semen is not going to suit every herd or every cow.
Farmers should then aim to breed a few high beef merit animals to increase their calf sales by selecting bulls with a calving difficulty percentage range suitable for the females being mated, and then select beef bulls with the greatest beef sub-index value.
